


Free, at his feet

by phrynne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boyfriends, Consent, Demisexual Draco Malfoy, Demisexuality, Dom Harry Potter, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Kissing, Kneeling, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, POV First Person, Sub Draco Malfoy, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrynne/pseuds/phrynne
Summary: It is only when I kneel for him that everything falls into place.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 53
Kudos: 229





	Free, at his feet

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I have an emotional breakdown I feel the need to write about them again, so here I am. This is a very personal piece, and not at all my usual, but I hope you like it.

It is only when I kneel for him that everything falls into place. 

It was never supposed to be this way. Not with him, not with anyone. 

But when I kneel, none of that matters. The whys. The hows. The whatever the hells. I drop to my knees for him and there is nothing beyond this. This exact space between his open knees, my too tight posture just seconds before I breathe in deeply and let myself sink down into it. Part of it is the silence. After I kneel, there’s only sweet, blessed silence. We don’t speak. He doesn’t order me around. He doesn’t tell me how beautiful I look on my knees for him. I don’t beg. He doesn’t tease me. This silence is ours. I stare at his feet, usually bare, my gaze tracing the frayed hem of his jeans. Then I close my eyes. I listen to him breathing. I feel his eyes on me, anchoring me down to earth. And all the doing and the screaming and the talking and the repeating it all over again slips away from my mind. My breath becomes deep, my mind emptied of all thought. No voices, no judgement, no past, no atonement. Nothing beyond the fact of me kneeling and him watching me. 

When it begins, I’m always nervous. I can’t really help it. We’re both awkward, still not used to being around each other casually. Whatever we are, casual was never the word for it. The minutes leading up to me kneeling are always a fake it, till you make it type of thing. He never manages to disguise his nervousness either, which is fine. It helps that I know I’m not the only one feeling these things, this out-of-placeness of us, even this word, us, as we fall into place with each other, as it gets easier every time, but also doesn’t. He never dresses up, nor does he ever tell me what I should wear. This isn’t about kinky clothes, or the lack of them, even if I’m usually naked before him. We come up with this ritual, which none of us decided on, but both of us do like breathing. I come in and take off my clothes. There’s fear and desire, yes. Although that’s only part of the story. Most people take their kink with their sex. I’m not most people. And because I’ve become used to living in a world where everything is about sex — the wanting of it, the having of it, the lacking of it, the searching for it, the dangling of it up in front of everybody’s noses, the incessant selling it, doing it, condemning it, controlling it, rinse and repeat, the all-encompassing demand that it has to be about it even when it is not about it — all of it made me believe I’d be alone with my needs, juggling along like everybody else, pretending sex is the ultimate connection, everlasting goal. Until I knelt for him that first time and I came up on the other side of that night knowing sex was nothing, nothing, nothing compared to this.

I fell on my knees, captured in his silence, this space I’ve been craving without even knowing. He never rushes me. I kneel for as long as I need. I let my head tilt down and his fingers catch my jaw, gentle. Sometimes he strokes my hair, sweetly. But what I like best is when I kneel down, resting my face on his foot. It’s not about his feet, either. I don’t have a foot fetish. In fact, I don’t care about feet at all. It’s how he makes me feel, by allowing me to be there, breathing down deeply, my skin touching his skin, my body melting down into the floor, knowing that for as long as I’m there, he is there too, witnessing me. My face to his feet, his warmth the only point of contact to the living world. Sometimes I cry. He lets me. The first time it happened, he was scared. He dropped down to his knees, gathered me in his arms and he searched my eyes. He was so afraid that he’d hurt me, although he had only let me kneel. Then he’d apologised. First, about everything, then about touching me without asking, the way he did when he held me because I was crying, then for supposedly forcing me into doing whatever it was we were doing and that’s when I stopped him. Because I wasn’t — am not — being coerced into anything. It took three other longer conversations — without any kneeling, actually sitting across a table from him in a coffee shop, said coffee in both our hands, bringing us closer to the word date and its usual predicaments — to convince him he wasn’t hurting me, that I wanted it, needed it. For some reason he said he wanted it too. Needed it too. I didn’t know why he felt this way. Didn’t know what I could possibly give him in return. But I did know what I wanted and he was offering to give it to me.

The next time I was only going to kneel for him, fully clothed like the time before. But for some reason I asked him if I could take all my clothes off. He said yes. He asked if I wanted him to look away as I did, I said no. I undressed before him, like I wanted. His eyes never left me. He took me in, the sight of me. I knelt for a long time. Then I put my head on his knee and he asked if he could touch my hair. I said yes. He did it for a long time, until my tears started falling on his knees, little smudges over his jeans. I felt completely undone, but also, utterly, thoroughly safe. Safe in a way I couldn’t explain, even to myself. Safe in a way I’d never felt. Safe in a way I thought I didn’t even deserve to feel. But we kept doing it. I would come over late, after work. My head would hurt from all the hours bent over complex, overly long, tiny-scripted scrolls. He’d look exhausted and sleep deprived, echoes of war in his eyes, but he’d cook me dinner and we’d speak quietly about things that didn’t really matter, except that they eventually did. We never drank in those nights, both wanting to be sober for our evenings together. It made everything all the more real, even as it felt like a dream. We’d move to his living room, he’d dim the lights, cast a warming spell, as I took my clothes off, neatly folding them and setting them over a chair, aligning my shoes in a corner. Sometimes I was hard, other times I wasn’t. Being hard wasn’t about the sex either. My body craved him looking at me. It craved to the point of aching. My hardening cock was a response to the intense way he watched me, without touching. To his patience, and his quietness, and his being there witnessing whatever this was. It felt like he didn’t wish to be anywhere else. He’d put up a cushion for me to kneel next to his favourite comfy chair, sometimes adding a cushioning spell if I wanted or needed to stay there longer. Then I’d kneel. Sometimes for hours. He didn’t watch TV. He didn’t read, or listen to music, or paid his bills or did anything other than staying there with me. This wasn’t about service kink, or using me as a prop, although there’s nothing wrong with that. It just wasn’t our thing. I liked that he didn’t watch TV because he was in fact watching me, enjoying me, kneeling there. He didn’t need anything else. I’d get tired eventually, my knees would hurt, even with his spells. But pain was part of it. If I cried, he would just let me. He cupped my cheek and felt my tears. He didn’t try to clean them away, unless I asked him to. At first, I would go for as long as I needed, then I’d get up, dress quietly, thank him and Floo to my lonely apartment across town. But after a while, he started bringing me tea afterwards, which I would drink while wearing one of his old pyjamas. That’s how we started dating. Not by going out to the movies, or Quidditch matches, or even out for coffee. But by this strange, comfortable, easy occurrence of tea late into the night, after hours of me kneeling at his feet. Not that we called it dating then. 

One night he asked me to stay over. I was afraid to say yes, so I did exactly that. I said yes. He offered to sleep on the couch, while I took the bed. I refused. That was the first time we slept together. We didn’t have sex. I brushed my teeth with my finger and a bit of his toothpaste and he said he’d get me a toothbrush the next day. Which he did. After that, I slept over as much as I could. He held me close, his fingers brushing over my wrist, his nose tucked in my neck. He started smiling easily at me. He laughed at my jokes. And he made me laugh in turn. He also made the best breakfast. The first time I kissed him was after laughing so hard, tears were dancing in my eyes and my body was trembling and he was right there, grinning, until I pulled him close, then closer. His smile faltered, caught between surprise and desire. Being this close to him was not like being high — I didn’t want that, I wanted the opposite. To find ground. To hold on to him and find purchase, to find if he was someone who could take me with all that I was, with all the flaws, and the quirks and the need to submit to something other than life as usual, or whatever normal people did, a string of routines and obligations until death caught on. 

As I looked at him just then, I realised that he was that person. He understood, or rather he would when I told him, when I explained to him what I really wanted. I don’t know what was going on in his mind just then, but he looked into my eyes, not moving away, not trying to get closer either, just holding me, waiting. Kissing him felt as steady as kneeling. His hands settled on my hips, safe and sound, his breath was a sure thing against my lips. I breathed him in, then we were kissing, tangling hands, mingling breaths, everything so real like a dream. He gave a tiny laugh. Disbelief. I kissed him harder, my hands climbing to his neck, his tongue sliding into my mouth, finally. We kissed for a very long time, until his living room was all shadows and breaths. I ended up on my knees before him, with him half swaying, half sitting on the chair. He was out of breath, eyes wide behind his glasses. I took both his hands in mine and knelt there, until our breathing calmed down, until he rested back against the chair, until he let my head drop to his knees. His hand shook when he caressed my hair. And I knew then he would never ask for more than I would want to give. A precious gift.

It became natural. I could have had the worst of days, my head about to burst, and all it took was for him to take my hand and lead me to his chair, where he’d sit and wait for me to get ready, undressing slowly, kneeling down. The ritual never changed. It had been perfect since that first time. What changed was the way we knew each other. The way he noticed the tension in my shoulders, the way I saw the shadows in his eyes. The way I finally understood that he needed this as much as I did, after all. That my trust was everything to him, that helping me ground myself and find my center was what kept him grounded. That our exchange went both ways. That my head on his knee was a gift to him, too. That we matched, me and him.

Today is our five year anniversary. Oftentimes, we’re still awkward. Sometimes, we disagree and we fight. We also talk and make up. We never go to sleep mad at each other. I still kneel for him, every time I need it. Sometimes, he’s the one to cry and I’m the one to hold him. When we feel like it, we have sex. I love the feeling of him close to me, as close as possible, anchoring me down and under and away. Setting me free.

Harry, my boyfriend, my best friend, my partner, my lover, my Dom, my anchor, my refuge, my ground. He’s sitting on his chair, tears in his eyes, the brightest smile on his face. I’m kneeling between his legs. Wearing only one thing: the collar he gave me. It feels perfect on my throat, silver and green, with our initials carved into it. My fingers brush lightly against it. Then I drop my arms, lock them behind me. I tilt my head down, and breathe. I’m home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, there, I'm demi & kinky, but never ventured writing about those two sides put together, because it felt too personal? Anyway, we need representation and diversity. And also, I needed this for my soul, really.  
> Hope it finds echo with demi/ace spectrum fellows around here! Let me know what you thought in the comments. Thanks for reading!


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